Leather ‘Ryder’ bag – JOSEPH
JOSEPH


*Technically, I do not have first-hand experience with dating apps, given the 12-year relationship, but the single millenials in the office say that’s what kids do these days.
*Technically, I do not have first-hand experience with dating apps, given the 12-year relationship, but the single millenials in the office say that’s what kids do these days.
If you too, for a large part of 2007 and maybe even a slice of 2008, spent most of your waking hours lusting after a canvas tote bag, then come in for a cuddle. We did it, comrade, we started the efficiency revolution! A canvas tote bag wasn’t just a canvas tote bag – it was a political statement (I had one that said ‘Puppies not Politics’), an inflatable magic pocket, a bottomless Mary Poppins/Hermione’s handbag that had undergone an Undetectable Extension Charm. There were months when I exclusively carried a tote bag, keys and coins jangling under various half-eaten Pret sandwiches, amongst acrylic paint tubes I picked up at the Uni shop. As a ‘flaneur’, it was a must-have item, because the point of it was that it collected evidence of an entire day’s worth of curiosity (knick-knacks).
Fast forward a decade, bag trends have come and gone, all the shapes and sizes. I now mysteriously have enough canvas tote bags to make soup from, but it still stands that none of my bags have proved as practical. I mean, have you tried shoving an aubergine into an Olympia Le Tan book clutch? (Actually, don’t say that on a date.) Enter Smythson, whose pale blue featherweight notebooks I have time and time again poured my heart, ideas and indecipherable scribbles onto, with the new Kingly Tote. The new butter-soft leather bag is an embodiment of their delicate yet resilient stationery, which comes in black or the legendary Nile Blue of the brand’s shopping bags. Stop, drop and roll it up, stick a loaf of bread in there next to your gym clothes (microwave pizza for me), whip it out when the airline nags your about excess luggage weight. Viva la revolucion!
Whether you’re an all-terrain ripper or a lumbering human ice-cone-machine in stirrups (AKA me), après-ski cocktails by a roaring fireplace is equally rewarding, if not nourishing. Le Grand Bellevue is home away from home, with all the right soft corners but with the edge that tends to come with boutique luxury. The lounge sports House of Hackney wallpapers, the subterranean spa a labyrinth of sauna and steam rooms, and Le Petit Chalet that serves mind-blowing raclette*, just a stone’s throw away within the grounds. Pack for the glaciers but don’t forget the lightweight cashmere basics for toasty lounges.
*You’ve already scaled a mountain (on a chairlift) (WHATEVER) today, so go on, have some cheese and spuds.
‘Mother used to collect bags’, I remember, as the ceiling momentarily flashes a shade of red as a bus rattles by, catching the first light on a Tuesday morning. ‘Whatever happened to those, I wonder…’. The suite looks somewhat bigger in the morning, warmer. I’d been hoarding the covers again last night, his pillow lays at the far edge of the Queen bed, defeated, out of reach. He doesn’t mind, just like he doesn’t mind that I’m not a morning person. He sets off to explore Hyde Park on a jog as I scramble out of the sheets. When you peel the blinds and crane your neck just right, you can see the dog walkers on Park Lane.
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It’s five past four in the afternoon, and the lobby is blissfully empty, save for a smiley porter in uniform by the revolving doors. There’s a pinch of musky oud on a swash of sweet leathery tang in the air, and a titter escapes from at an early-bird cocktail reunion at the Park Room. The ladies are all wearing the latest encrusted Dior flats. “A pot of Earl Grey please, no milk” I request, as I slide into the deep green couch near the quilted leather walls. I decide against the sachet of sweetener as I overhear bits of sugary gossip between strangers from behind the art deco shelving.
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The caramelized marshmallows give way to a cinnamon-y mash of sweet potato. I make a funny noise and he laughs, gobbling a bite of New York Strip off his fork. We wash it down with an Argentine Red, recommended by the host. “We were born in the wrong century,” I surmise, and proceed to painting a picture of The Grosvenor House House in post-war 50’s: teeming with politicians, haughty women of power, and affable families, using a bit of the cheesecake dessert to describe the Dior two-piece I’d have worn to dinner at the JW Steakhouse.
Art and history is second nature to JW Marriott Grosvenor House , opened in 1929 for the very purpose of tailoring to a grand scale. The hotel boasts some 500 bedrooms and a rich portfolio of clients (including the Queen, who is known to have learnt to skate in the ice rink – now the Great Room). Conversation with Christie’s is a series of inspiring and informative features, along with global events across the JW Marriott properties showcasing some of rarest treasures, in collaboration with Christie’s, world-renowned art collectors and auction-house based out of Rockerfeller Plaza, New York. September 5th, we met the teams at the inaugural event in London, and shot this story around the art of appraisal of an iconic vintage Hermes bag, in a cheeky daydream re-enactment of The Grosvenor House in the glorious 50’s.
Place Charles de Gaulle: the deathtrap of a roundabout in central Paris where twelve straight avenues cross intersect in a star-formation – a place where I have sworn I will eventually die no matter what mode of transport I’m in/how veteran of a driver may be commanding the wheel/handlebar – is possibly the best I can do to explain Fashion Month to those outside the industry. It’s that noise, the lack of traffic lanes of any sort, the uncomfortable closeness to fellow comrades marching around the roundabout, and having to manoeuvre through the full circuit without crashing into, say, a scooter, or a blithe pedestrian (most possibly a tourist – even in the metaphor) (how many a German tour group experienced a Lion King-esque streetstyle photographer stampede towards Kendall, I do wonder) trying to jay-walk his way across to the Arc de Triomphe and wreaking havoc to any conceived order in this chaos. That is Fashion Month, for me.
In this equation, London is a relative comfort zone only due to the fact that the bed is familiar and the husband is baffled IRL (instead of ‘Y U DO DIS’ goodnight messages on WhatsApp), but the chaos is as thick. Tickets are missing, Simon – my source of enthusiasm in all this – ever scrambling in pursuit of some order in chaos (an impossible feat), and of course, the new Soho venue is simply a ‘hilarity’. Between all that, the fresh, new collections are the only clear sound in the commotion, that and the Apartment – a sanctuary known to digital somebody’s in the same plight. It may hustle and bustle, but anywhere that’s stocked with burgers, nap-pods, emergency Kurt Geiger, and infinite charge-stations is a clear win in this roundabout of death. In fact it’s like taking residence in the Arc de Triomphe, which coincidentally is also one of the best vantage points of the city (Alice knows).
Here’s a scribble and a song, on the past season in London. More a scribble, because even after three weeks of supposed R&R my ears are still ringing of shell-shock. But I suppose that’s just me, getting closer to my 30’s and the bottomless barrel of excuses that come with. Call us a cab, BECAUSE I’M 30 AND WALKING IS DIFFICULT. Heck, I can’t wait to be 50.
GTG, husband’s just texted me a ‘Y U DO DIS’ from the other room.
Move aside coffeeshops, hotel lobbies and odd little sandwich joints. Wrangling over one power outlet with 12% battery and changing awkwardly in the unisex toilet is a thing of the past. the Apartment is juice-a-plenty (both of fruit and the electric kind).